There is a parable of a villager who goes to the city and learns english. Now he thinks he is superior and uses only english to describe certain words in his daily life.
There comes a day where he is on his deathbed. He wanted water and he keeps saying, “Water… Water…”. No one understands what he is asking for as the other villagers only speak Gujarati. There is a water jug under the dying man’s bed but he dies saying, “Water… Water…”. So goes the saying,
” Water water karta mua khaatalaa niche pani… “
This one is one of my favorite topics to talk about as my grandparents lived in a small village when I was in India and my dad worked for a large pharmaceutical company and we were privileged enough to live in the city and so the type of dialect my sister, brother and I grew up speaking was very different than when we visited our grandparents. Many considered the city dialect to be polished and proper and the one from the village to be a little bit backwards, now this particular fable is about when one doesn’t value and honor his language and tries to be somebody else. So the moral of the story- be you!